I love you.
His words echoed inside her head. She told herself she didn’t want him to love her, but she knew that was a lie. She wondered when she’d gotten so damn good at lying to herself. She wanted him to love her. Wanted that desperately. She loved him, too. Had loved him since the day she’d met him over two years ago in that smoky little pub. She wanted a future with him. A father for Jack.
But what about your work here, Lily? Are you going to walk away from it? Are you going to walk away from the children? From Strawberry?
Closing her eyes against the barrage of thoughts, the stab of pain in her chest, she listened to the drip of water in the sink. The tick of the clock on the wall. The occasional thump of a water pipe in the corridor beyond. Fatigue dragged at her, a turbulent river sucking her into its murky depths. She fought the current but felt herself slipping into darkness. Too much to think about. Too much to do. I love you….
Lily jolted awake, aware that she was breathing hard, that her body was slicked with sweat despite the basement chill. She wasn’t sure what wakened her. Maybe the dream she’d been having about the gun. The soldier wearing the black beret…
Turning her head slightly, she glanced over at the clock, realizing only fifteen minutes had gone by. She sagged into the bed, set her hand against a soundly sleeping Jack. A series of loud pops from the corridor shattered the silence. Lily bolted upright. She’d been in Rebelia long enough to be intimately acquainted with the sound of gunfire. But she’d never grown used to it, and the sound brought gooseflesh to her arms. Next to her Jack stirred and began to whimper. Scooping him into her arms, she hugged him to her and set her hand gently over his mouth.
Her heart slammed against her ribs when she heard another series of pops, then the shuffle of boots on tile outside the door. Angry voices followed and Lily knew the soldiers had come to the hospital looking for her. Terror knifed through her at the thought. Not because she feared for her safety, but because of the child she held in her arms.
Vaulting from the bed, holding Jack against her with one arm, she kicked the pedestal brake and shoved the bed toward the small storage room. If she could get it out of sight and hide beneath it, there was a chance they wouldn’t find her.
The door swung open before she’d made it halfway across the room. She looked up, saw the silhouettes of a dozen men, heard the sound of steel against steel as automatic weapons were cocked. Her only thought was that they would shoot her—shoot Jack—before even knowing who she was. Razor sharp terror cut through her. The rush of adrenaline came so hard it made her dizzy. “Don’t shoot!” she screamed in Rebelian. “I’ve got a baby!”
Her heart beat a hard tattoo against her ribs as several men shuffled into the room. She could tell by the black berets they wore that they were part of DeBruzkya’s army. They had a distinctly cruel, ragged look about them. The look of men who’d lost a little bit of their humanity.
A tall, thin man with a goatee stepped forward, his eyes skimming the length of her and landing on Jack. Without speaking he reached into the pocket of his torn jacket, withdrew a badly wrinkled sheet of paper and showed it to the man behind him.
“En hur.” It’s her.
The man behind him was overweight and pale. A cigarette dangled from the side of his mouth. He looked at Lily and smiled. “General DeBruzkya is going to be very pleased.”
Lily glanced over her shoulder, but she knew there was no escape. She thought about the doctors and nurses aboveground and wondered how many of them these men had killed. Aware that she was shaking uncontrollably, that Jack had started to cry, she watched, horrified and transfixed, as the crowd of men parted. Her knees went weak when she saw the reverence in their eyes. Only one man she knew of could command that kind of respect—even if it wasn’t earned.
Shock rattled her entire body when General Bruno DeBruzkya entered the room. For a moment, she couldn’t catch her breath. Her vision tunneled on his face. A wave of disbelief swept through her. His gaze sought hers. An emotion she didn’t understand touched his eyes briefly but was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure she’d seen it at all.
“Lillian Scott.”
DeBruzkya was a short, rotund man, but he had the voice of a giant. She jolted at the sound of it, then silently berated herself because she saw clearly the moment of twisted pleasure her fear gave him. His boots clicked smartly on the tile floor as he walked to her.
“How did you find me?” she asked in a voice that sounded amazingly calm considering she was coming apart inside.
“Ah, such a lack of manners.” He tsked. “You Americans. All business. No time for small talk.”